"Gale, I am going to ask you a rather curious thing. Will you do it, without asking why?" Colonel Shepherd said, quietly.
"Certainly, colonel, if it is in my power," Will said, somewhat surprised.
"Will you take off your patrol jacket, open your shirt, and turn it well down at the neck?"
For a moment, Will looked astounded at this request. He saw, by the tone in which it was made, that it was seriously uttered and, without hesitation, he began to unhook his patrol jacket. As he did so, his eye fell upon Colonel Ripon's face; and the intense anxiety, and emotion, that it expressed caused him to pause, for a moment.
Something extraordinary hung on what he had been asked to do. All sorts of strange thoughts flashed through his brain. Hundreds of times in his life he had said to himself that, if ever he discovered his parents, it would be by means of this mark upon his neck, which he was now asked to expose. The many remarks which had been made, of his likeness to Colonel Ripon, flashed across his mind; and it was with an emotion scarcely inferior to that of the old officer that he opened his shirt, and turned down the collar.
The sight was conclusive. Colonel Ripon held out his arms, with a cry of:
"My son, my son!"
Bewildered and delighted, Will felt himself pressed to the heart of the man whom he liked, and esteemed, beyond all others.
With a word of the heartiest congratulation, Colonel Shepherd left the father and son together; to exchange confidences, and tell to each other their respective stories, and to realize the great happiness which had befallen them both. Their delight was without a single cloud--save that which passed for a moment through Colonel Ripon's mind, as he thought how his wife would have rejoiced, had she lived to see that day.
His joy was, in some respects, even greater than that of his son. The latter had always pictured to himself that, if he ever discovered his father, he should find him all that was good; but the colonel had, for many years, not only given up all hope of ever finding his son, but almost every desire to do so. He had thought that, if still alive, he must be a gipsy vagabond--a poacher, a liar, a thief--like those among whom he would have been brought up. From such a discovery, no happiness could be looked for; only annoyance, humiliation, and trouble. To find his son, then, all that he could wish for--a gentleman, a most promising young officer, the man, indeed, to whom he had been so specially attracted--was a joy altogether unhoped and unlooked for.